Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance,
2014
Cornell Law School
Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Global trade imbalance and domestic financial fragility are intimately related. When a nation runs persistently massive current account deficits to maintain global liquidity as has the United States now for decades, its central bank effectively relinquishes exchange rate flexibility to become a de facto central bank to the world. That in turn prevents the bank from playing its essential credit-modulatory role at home, at least absent strict capital controls that are difficult to administer and have long been taboo. And this can in turn render credit-fueled asset price bubbles and busts all but impossible to prevent, irrespective of the nation's …
Why (Only) Esops?,
2014
Cornell Law School
Taking Distribution Seriously,
2014
Cornell Law School
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …
Legally Defending Mission-Creep: How The Bretton Woods Charters Anticipate And Justify Imf Attention To "Structural" Variables In Its Oversight Of The Global Financial System,
2014
Cornell Law School
Legally Defending Mission-Creep: How The Bretton Woods Charters Anticipate And Justify Imf Attention To "Structural" Variables In Its Oversight Of The Global Financial System, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice,
2014
Cornell Law School
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for economically oriented transnational legal theorists to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. It is less common for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. Moreover, we effectively define ourselves and our fellow humans by reference to that which we equalize. For it is in virtue of the latter that our global welfare formulations treat us as "counting" for purposes of globally aggregating and maximizing. To analyze maximization language on the one hand, and equalization and identification language …
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy,
2014
Cornell Law School
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.” This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional “Safety And Soundness” To “Systemic Stability” In Financial Supervision,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional “Safety And Soundness” To “Systemic Stability” In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This Working Paper is no longer available. The published version of this article is available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1405/ Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, …
What The New Treasury Must Do,
2014
Cornell Law School
What The New Treasury Must Do, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
After a number of heady false starts, against the backdrop of threatened financial catastrophe, Congress and the White House enacted a stopgap financial “bailout”plan early in October 2008. From that point onward the “plan” has repeatedly morphed, morphed again, and morphed back through a string of remarkably fleeting guises. One suspects this dynamic will continue, at least for a while, as a new president and Congress find their footing in the first half of 2009.
What Kinds Of Stock Ownership Plans Should There Be? Of Esops, Other Sops And "Ownership Societies",
2014
Cornell Law School
What Kinds Of Stock Ownership Plans Should There Be? Of Esops, Other Sops And "Ownership Societies", Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Present-day advocates of an ownership society (OS) do not seem to have noticed the means we have already employed to become an OS where homes and human capital (higher education) are concerned. Nor do they appear to have considered whether these same means - which amount to publicly enhanced private credit markets - might be employed to spread shares in business firms, with a view to completing our OS. This article, the third in a series, seeks tentatively to fill that gap. It does so first by demonstrating how the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, in effect replicates our …
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders,
2014
Cornell Law School
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment,
2014
Cornell University Law School
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …
The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.
Vertical Restraints After Monsanto,
2014
Cornell Law School
Vertical Restraints After Monsanto, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
The decision in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp. represents the Supreme Court's latest effort to articulate the standards governing vertical restraints of trade under the United States anti-trust law. It is unlikely that this will be the last time the Court addresses this topic. Notwithstanding the many Supreme Court decisions in this area, several issues remain unresolved. Indeed, Monsanto may have created (or resurrected) as many new questions as it answered, a phenomenon characteristic of most prior opinions in this area. At least part of the reason for this unsettled state is that, from the outset, the Supreme Court …
The Dynamics Of Firm Behavior Under Alternative Cost Structures,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Dynamics Of Firm Behavior Under Alternative Cost Structures, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
A large and growing number of studies attempt to determine the important factors affecting firms' decisions with respect to price, output, and inventories. A striking feature of this literature is the embarrassingly large number of alternative models—all allegedly consistent with the principles of profit maximization—which are used to justify various reduced form or behavioral equations to be estimated with the appropriate firm or industry data. It is rare, however, that the equations to be estimated are derived rigorously from the underlying model. Because of this, the restrictions placed on the equations to be estimated are often limited at worst to …
Market Power In Antitrust,
2014
Cornell Law School
Market Power In Antitrust, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
The concept of market power is at the core of antitrust. Philosophically, antitrust policy is aimed primarily at preventing firms from achieving, retaining, or abusing market power. Operationally, assessing whether a firm or firms have market power or any reasonable prospect for achieving it is often the first (and sometimes, the only) step in performing an antitrust analysis. Few would dispute that market power should play a prominent role in antitrust analysis. Nevertheless, important questions remain. Some of these questions quite naturally focus on the precise degree of importance given to market power. Is it an essential ingredient in antitrust …
Predatory Pricing,
2014
Cornell Law School
Pigeonholes In Antitrust,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Economics Of Predatory Pricing,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Economics Of Predatory Pricing, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
The revival of interest among economists in predatory pricing, spawned by Areeda and Turner's 1975 article, and the tidal wave of literature which has followed, creates a serious problem for the lawyer interested in keeping up with what economists are saying on the subject. Articles appearing in the standard economics journals are often inaccessible, due to the advanced level of mathematics normally employed, and seem of little apparent relevance, due to the detailed but often artificially sounding assumptions used to generate conclusions. The materials appearing in law reviews, while perhaps less technical, is voluminous and not always original, Worst of …
Predatory Pricing: Competing Economic Theories And The Evolution Of Legal Standards,
2014
Boston University Law School
Predatory Pricing: Competing Economic Theories And The Evolution Of Legal Standards, Joseph F. Brodley, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
Recent years have witnessed a virtual explosion in the legal and economic literature dealing with predatory pricing. Equally dramatic has been the swift adoption by several courts of policy conclusions derived from this literature—a development that is startling, given the complexity and volume of the literature and the lack of consensus among legal and economic scholars. The result has been to raise an acute problem for lawyers and judges who must assess the validity and applicability of competing economic models, mold stubborn and unruly facts to fit abstract economic theories, translate economic theories into legal doctrines, and resolve puzzling cost …
The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics, George A. Hay
George A. Hay
Any discussion about law and economics ought to begin with a definition or at least an explanation of what it is we are talking about. There is, however, a risk in starting there. Just as classics scholars may debate endlessly about who precisely should be counted as a classicist or philosophers might debate who can properly be counted as a Kantian, there is likely to be no consensus about precisely what counts as law and economics or who is doing it. Indeed, the acknowledged superstar and chief guru of the law and economics movement, Judge Richard Posner, has argued that, …
